The academy project “Alexander von Humboldt auf Reisen. Wissenschaft aus der Bewegung” comprises the complete edition of Alexander von Humboldt’s manuscripts on the topic of travel at the interface of cultural and natural sciences. This includes travel journals, diaries, memoirs, publications in the countries and regions visited as well as correspondence. The focus of the project lies on the…
For some years now, research has turned increasingly to the history of the European monarchy. Only recently, the theory of a continuous decline of the monarchy since the French Revolution of 1789 was fundamentally challenged. The monarchies had been a historical phenomenon of previously underestimated flexibility and efficiency, which was able to assert itself in the age of constitutionalism and…
I margini del libro ("The Margins of the Book") is an international project to explore and catalogue dedication texts in the Italian tradition (2002-2006 supported by the SNSF and in collaboration with the University of Applied Sciences Kaiserslautern, Germany). The Electronic Archive of the Italian Dedication (AIDI), accessible online since July 2004, provides all interested parties with a…
The binational research project “Arthur Schnitzler digital. Digitale historisch-kritische Edition (Werke 1905 bis 1931)” is carried out by scientists of the Bergische University Wuppertal, the University of Cambridge, the University College London, and the University of Bristol in cooperation with the Cambridge University Library, the German literary archive Marbach, and the Trier Centre for…
The Aristotle annotations of Ibn Rušd or Averroes (1126–1198) form a total of the Arabic reception of the Greek philosophy and from the Late Antiquity. As such, they have had a formative influence on the respective discourses of knowledge, especially in their Latin and Hebrew translations over the centuries. The project deals with an yet unexplored part of Ibn Rušd’s natural philosophy, which at…
With the complete edition of the works of Karl Barth (1886-1968), the goal is to make available the texts, some of which have not yet been published, some of which are remote or scattered, in a critically commented edition that meets today's scientific standards. More than 50 volumes have been published since 1970. It is expected that a total of 75 volumes will be published. The texts of the…
The project “Bernd Alois Zimmermann-Gesamtausgabe, Historisch-kritische Ausgabe seiner Werke, Schriften und Briefe”, jointly sponsored by the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the Academy of Sciences and Literature, Mainz, is the first musicological edition project for music after 1945.
The project, which was developed in close cooperation with the music archive of the…
With its scope and diverse subject matter, Arabic literature is one of the richest in the world. Beginning in the 7th century CE, it blossomed within a civilization characterized by a vast network of cultural traditions and ties that were shaped by Islam. Like the Akkadian and Chinese literatures, Arabic literature is an ancient and erudite archive of knowledge. Until well into the 19th century,…
The aim of the project described below is to develop two fundamental desiderata of Koranic research: an edition of the Koranic text that meets critical standards and a comprehensive commentary on the Koran that consistently interprets it in the context of its historical context of origin. In contrast to the Kairen Koran edition of 1923, which is currently widespread, the project presented here is…
Ceiling and mural paintings are constitutive elements in the design of baroque interiors. Unlike all other forms of pictorial art, these truly three-dimensional artistic media define early modern architecture literally from above, through colourful and complex iconographic programmes: in ecclesiastical as well as secular environments, in residential palaces and ceremonial halls, churches and…
In addition to Roman and canonical law, the Sachsenspiegel (reported in the Eastern Harz foreland between 1220 and 1235) and the famous town charter of Magdeburg (developed in the town of Magdeburg and decisively shaped by the spellings of the local court chair between the 13th and 15th centuries) form the common foundations of Central and Eastern European legal systems. Simultaneously with the…
The DaSCH is a data and service centre for research data in the humanities, which the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences has been operating since 2017 as a national institution in cooperation with the University of Basel. The central coordination office is located at the Digital Humanities Lab of the University of Basel under the direction of Prof. Dr. Lukas Rosenthaler. For the first…
Medieval and early modern inscriptions crafted before 1650, in Latin and German language, situated in German-speaking areas are at the heart of this project. Inscriptions are significant and unique historical sources because they are often preserved in an authentic state and in their original setting. For the premodern era, script which was affixed to stone, wood, metal, glass as well as textiles…
While other European cultural nations have comprehensive etymological dictionaries, German, one of the world’s most common languages in quantitative terms, lacks a large scientific etymological dictionary. For this reason, the “German etymology of semantic fields in a European Context (DWEE)” wants to close this gap on the one hand: This applies particularly to words that have only appeared since…
In light of the rapid decline of the dialectal linguistic competence especially in the north of the German language area it is the goal of the DMW, by means of a first systematic survey of current data, to document and analyse the still tangible stocks of the dialects or the manner of speaking with the maximal variation from standard of two generations of speakers in the Midwest of Germany.…
The research project “Die frühbuddhistischen Handschriften aus Gandhāra: religiöse Literatur an der Schnittstelle von Indien, Zentralasien und China” was established in 2012. On the basis of philological and historical methods, it provides new insight into the early history of Buddhism on its way to becoming a world religion. The project studies manuscripts found in the 1990s in northern Pakistan…
The Coptic-Sahidic Bible is one of the most important literary witnesses of Christianity in the eastern Mediterranean. The Coptic Old Testament, which essentially dates back to the 4th century, is one of the earliest and most extensive versions of the Greek Septuagint (LXX). The translation of the Bible into Coptic was source and inspiration for the entire Coptic-Christian literature of Egypt. In…
At the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz and in cooperation with the Technical University of Darmstadt, a digital dictionary of surnames is being developed. For the first time, this dictionary records all currently existing family names Germany (also foreign names) lexicographically, maps them and etymologizes them with the help of maps.
Since 2005, e-codices has been editing medieval and modern manuscripts on the Internet as the digital manuscript library of Switzerland. Its high-quality and innovative presentation makes it a nationally and internationally recognized research tool. Currently 2'480 manuscripts from 97 libraries are online (as of October 26, 2020). The project is freely accessible (Open Access). The goal is to…
The decrees of the Frankish rulers are known as capitularies because of their subdivision into chapters (lat. capitula). They are amongst the most important sources for the history of the Frankish kingdoms. They are instructions similar to laws, ordinances or provisions, regulating political, military, ecclesiastical, social, economic and cultural matters.